USA - No end to Mount Desert fluoride debate
On one side, Mount Desert Water District Manager Paul Slack has called fluoride a “toxin” and a “poison.” On the other, Dr. Dora Anne Mills, the director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, recently affirmed her belief that water fluoridation is “one of the ten most successful health achievements of the 20th century.”
Whether the vote at the March 5 town meeting at which Mount Desert residents overwhelmingly voted to end fluoridation by a 229-42 margin will make the town a pioneer in reversing decades of pro-fluoride thinking, as Mr. Slack hopes, or whether the vote was based on “fear” and “misinformation,” as Dr. Mills has said, remains to be seen. But retired Bar Harbor dentist Dr. Gordon Young said in a visit to the Bar Harbor Times office this week that fluoride works and is perfectly safe in small amounts.
Now age 93, Dr. Young said he’s a bit foggy on the dates, but that he arrived in Bar Harbor in the 1950s after serving in the army and attending dental school at Harvard University. He opened an office on the corner of Main and Cottage streets; one day, a nurse came to him and told him that many of the schoolchildren had bad teeth, so he decided to do a survey, looking at the mouths of hundreds of kids. He was not pleased with his findings.
“I said to the nurse, ‘The children's teeth are all rotten, but look, here’s a child without any cavities,’” Dr. Young recalled. “The nurse said to me, ‘that’s unusual.’”
Dr. Young began looking for a way to improve the teeth of children. He said he read of a town in Texas where fluoride naturally occurred in the water and where children had very healthy teeth. He worked to have fluoride added to the water in Bar Harbor and in 1963 — the same year as in Mount Desert — voters approved water fluoridation. Years later, he was surveying the teeth of schoolchildren again.
"I was doing the same thing, checking the children's teeth," he said. "And they all had healthy, strong teeth. Then I came to one child with bad teeth and said to the nurse, ‘Look, here's a child with cavities.’ That had become unusual.”
Mr. Slack, in his information campaign to inform voters of the danger of fluoride, cited a 2006 National Research Council report that said the current maximum contaminant level for fluoride in drinking water set at four mg/liter “does not protect against adverse health effects,” namely fluorosis — a condition that can cause the loss of tooth enamel and the pitting of teeth. The report did not state what level is healthy.
Dr. Young said that over-fluoridation is a valid concern, but that the level added to the water in Bar Harbor — about one milligram per liter — is safe.
“In some places, the natural level of fluoride in the water is too much, and they have to take it out,” he said. “But one part per million doesn’t harm you at all.”
He said the danger in Bar Harbor would come from following Mount Desert’s lead and ending fluoridation, as he fears children’s teeth would revert back to the “rotten” state he witnessed in the 1950s. “Now, the kids’ teeth are like rocks because they've got fluoride in them,” he said.
Jeff Van Trump, the superintendent of the Bar Harbor Water Division, said removing fluoride from the water is “not something we’re going to look at doing” unless residents raise the issue and bring it to a vote.
If their teeth were like rocks why is it not the same in other USA towns that are fluoridated? Plenty of evidence on these pages that show that is not the case.
Whether the vote at the March 5 town meeting at which Mount Desert residents overwhelmingly voted to end fluoridation by a 229-42 margin will make the town a pioneer in reversing decades of pro-fluoride thinking, as Mr. Slack hopes, or whether the vote was based on “fear” and “misinformation,” as Dr. Mills has said, remains to be seen. But retired Bar Harbor dentist Dr. Gordon Young said in a visit to the Bar Harbor Times office this week that fluoride works and is perfectly safe in small amounts.
Now age 93, Dr. Young said he’s a bit foggy on the dates, but that he arrived in Bar Harbor in the 1950s after serving in the army and attending dental school at Harvard University. He opened an office on the corner of Main and Cottage streets; one day, a nurse came to him and told him that many of the schoolchildren had bad teeth, so he decided to do a survey, looking at the mouths of hundreds of kids. He was not pleased with his findings.
“I said to the nurse, ‘The children's teeth are all rotten, but look, here’s a child without any cavities,’” Dr. Young recalled. “The nurse said to me, ‘that’s unusual.’”
Dr. Young began looking for a way to improve the teeth of children. He said he read of a town in Texas where fluoride naturally occurred in the water and where children had very healthy teeth. He worked to have fluoride added to the water in Bar Harbor and in 1963 — the same year as in Mount Desert — voters approved water fluoridation. Years later, he was surveying the teeth of schoolchildren again.
"I was doing the same thing, checking the children's teeth," he said. "And they all had healthy, strong teeth. Then I came to one child with bad teeth and said to the nurse, ‘Look, here's a child with cavities.’ That had become unusual.”
Mr. Slack, in his information campaign to inform voters of the danger of fluoride, cited a 2006 National Research Council report that said the current maximum contaminant level for fluoride in drinking water set at four mg/liter “does not protect against adverse health effects,” namely fluorosis — a condition that can cause the loss of tooth enamel and the pitting of teeth. The report did not state what level is healthy.
Dr. Young said that over-fluoridation is a valid concern, but that the level added to the water in Bar Harbor — about one milligram per liter — is safe.
“In some places, the natural level of fluoride in the water is too much, and they have to take it out,” he said. “But one part per million doesn’t harm you at all.”
He said the danger in Bar Harbor would come from following Mount Desert’s lead and ending fluoridation, as he fears children’s teeth would revert back to the “rotten” state he witnessed in the 1950s. “Now, the kids’ teeth are like rocks because they've got fluoride in them,” he said.
Jeff Van Trump, the superintendent of the Bar Harbor Water Division, said removing fluoride from the water is “not something we’re going to look at doing” unless residents raise the issue and bring it to a vote.
If their teeth were like rocks why is it not the same in other USA towns that are fluoridated? Plenty of evidence on these pages that show that is not the case.
posted by Bill at
9:53 AM
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